It is difficult to summarise 2 days of great marketing presentations, networking and insights. I might have missed sessions and topics, and for this reason this post cannot be representative for the full event. So, here are my very personal perspective and takeaways. Sometime items might be disconnected: the post is coming directly from my meeting notes and I simply had no time to consolidate and secure a proper logic flow.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing was the key topic with multiple presentations (including my contribution) and workshops. Based on a survey from Frost, CM represents the main investment planned by marketing departments in 2016 (TradeShows the item suffering the most substantial decrease).

No more content, more quality content. Too much content is the general concern. The feeling is shared among the majority of the audience.

Content creation can be centralised but still we have a last mile of decentralisation due to SEO and keywords

Segmentation by persona (even if with different flavours) and customer journeys are common techniques adopted by content marketing strategists. Content, distribution channels and marketing tactics are based on different steps of the customer journey (eg. customers are adverse to paid media in the knowledge phase of customer journey, since they’re looking for information).

Internal and external influencers are key-factors of success for a content marketing strategy.

Storytelling and emotional connections play a key-role in content marketing (great presentation from Zurich’s CMO).

Content strategy comes first. Channel strategy follows (and I was very vocal with this point).

Marketing innovation rising in B2B

B2B is no longer a “Boring to Boring” environment. For the first time B2B is adopting marketing innovation and technologies at a fastest speed than B2C.

B2B and B2C share same challenges. Interesting to see enterprises of different sizes (HP, Zurich, Xerox) and geographies approaching similar issues, sometime with different approaches and methodologies.

I will be on the stage tomorrow for a panel, providing my opinion on how Model Modern Marketing Organizations should evolve. Then I will bespeakingon Wednesday, presenting the case of Implementation of Content Marketing strategy in a large enterprise, with some theory and best practices coming from my experience in Schneider as a leader of Marketing Integration and Content Marketing for one of the BUs.

If you happen to be in Cascais and you are interested in listening the full story, just stop me and ask (better if in front of a drink)!

Now busy reviewing my presentation deck and understanding how the event app works…

Starting to get ready for my next Conference – Frost&Sullivan Digital Marketing 2016 Europe will take place in Portugal in a couple of weeks. Here are the agenda, brochure and press release.

I will be part of a panel on Day 1, discussing how to Model Modern Marketing Organizations. Then I will be speaking on Day 2 still about how to transform a current marketing org from a traditional to a modern marketing model. I will be presenting some theory and then a coupe of best practices coming from my experience in Schneider as a leader of the Content Marketing approach for one of the BUs.

I have just accepted to be part of the speaker pool at the Digital Marketing 2016 Europe Conference from Frost & Sullivan in Portugal on 25-27 January 2016!

Specifically, I will attend one panel session (Ask the Experts! Panel Discussion – Modelling a Modern Marketing Organisation ) and I will lead one formal speaking session (Fresh Perspective – Social Media: Best Practices for B2B Lead Generation).

Thinking about contents for the full session. I think that my content marketing-social project will be a good fit.